I’ve always fancied myself to be a patient person. Sure I’d get annoyed a little at times, and if you were to ever get on my bad side–whoa boy–let’s just say I was one to hold a grudge. But it was a comfortable balance. I wasn’t nearly as bad as most of the world, and as far as I knew God and I were good to leave it at that. Little did I know…He wasn’t.

All of a sudden I was finding it difficult to merely hold it together. The tiniest annoyances would set me off. It began to escalate to a point where I would be consumed with the smallest things. It became the topic of every discussion, “You have no idea what I have to deal with on a daily basis…” or “I don’t know if I can take anymore of his stupid comments…” I was experiencing roadrage in my daily life and for a guy who hasn’t driven in years, that’s a bizarre phenomenon! My impatience began to build up, until I was brimming with bitterness and resentment. My heart was hard as stone towards anyone who offended me. It was as if God had taken the training wheels off of my patience and I was falling off my bike faster than I could get on.

This went on for four months. Four months of me being prideful and self-righteous, sitting in church nodding and saying my Amens and Hallelujahs to messages that were clearly for the sinners in the congregation and couldn’t possibly be for me. Messages on the greatness of God, on His Lordship over our lives, on His sacrifice–I was taking all this good stuff into my ears, but they weren’t getting to my heart. But God takes His perfect time and everyone of those messages, everything I was seeing, hearing, reading was making a difference, even when I continued to struggle with the same issues.

I was reading Francis Chan’s book Crazy Love and he speaks on how God needs nothing, yet would do and has done everything to have a relationship with us, yet here we are desperately in need of Him, yet more often than not, we want nothing to do with Him. Romans 5:8 says “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (TNIV) That’s the kind of inhuman love we’re called to share with the world and here I am unable love a person for not having the same taste in movies as me.

All that talk of love had its effect on me, but God wasn’t quite done yet and neither was I. I’d be hanging out with my friends discussing the book and in the same conversation start complaining about a roommate, or Manhattan tourists. I was now hobbling along on my bike and slamming back down on the pavement.

What I realize now, but couldn’t possibly see then, was the fact that my impatience was essentially me stating my superiority over others. I was seeing everything in terms of me vs. you. If I determined my intellect was superior, I felt I had the right to find you offensive. We do it all the time. Someone drives too slowly in front you, you have the right to curse them since you are the faster motorist. In a city like New York, we especially feel a certain right, as New Yorkers to treat tourists like second class citizens. So often I felt that I had earned a certain right to be impatient. That I just needed to vent and I was righteous in doing so.

God takes His perfect time with us. Finally He spoke words to me that would not have meant much had I not struggled that four months, heard those messages, read those words, seen the lives of people around me. I remember the day perfectly. I was helping a friend of a friend move. I showed up a little early expecting to load some stuff into a truck. I walk into the apartment full of open boxes and this person is on her way out the door! She tells me that she needs to go to work and if I could do her a big favor and tape up all the boxes. I sat in the apartment alone looking at packing tape in my hand and strangely enough I wasn’t annoyed. The thought weakly entered my head that “she should done this days ago, she’s not even going to be grateful for this.” But then something miraculous happened. In that moment alone in that apartment He spoke in a still small voice.

What if I only did things for you when I know you’d be grateful for them? How often do you dump your baggage on me last minute when I gave you every opportunity?

I almost fell over. My heart was overwhelmed with joy at the mere truth that all this time I didn’t have right to be impatient. That weight, that hardened heart was lifted and all that was left was love. I loved that girl because she left me with all her last minute packing because it reminded me of what my Savior has done for me. What would have normally lead to bitterness, and disdain was now simply love. I lovingly taped up all those boxes singing aloud, tears in my eyes and in that apartment I had one of the most intimate, joyful worship experiences of my life.

Later that day I was walking behind a particularly slow group of tourist in Times Square and instead of my impatient voice I heard His still small voice again.

How often do you walk around this life like you own it and get in the way of my path?

And for the first time in my life I loved tourists! I began to sing out loud praises to God in the middle of Times Square, which lead to a couple of odd glances, but I was too full of joy to care. This was true freedom and fullness of joy that could only come from God.

My father would later grunt ironically in his impatient old Korean man way that “That’s the fruits of the spirit! Love is patient fool!”

It was with that kick in the pants that I began to tell everyone I met about what God had done. And everytime I wrote this down, or told someone what had happened, God has blown my mind with new insights from His word and from other people. What I had gone through was a shift in thinking. Like my small group liked to put it “Shift happens.” I went from judging others based on how they related to me, to loving others based how I related to God. I no longer had the right to be offended by what someone else had done because I had done much worse to Him and yet He would do and has done everything to be in a relationship with me. He not only forgave me, He takes His perfect time with me.

God wanted me to move forward from my stagnant, comfortable Christian life. I was standing still on an down escalator moving away from God. A lot of times in our struggle, we just want God to fix it right then and there, but God wants us to grow. Had I not struggled for four months, I would not have come to this realization that it is by His grace towards us that we are free from offenses commited against us.

Let’s take it even further now. Christ suffered the worst injustices, was falsely accused, beaten, mocked and given a criminal’s execution on the cross. Nails driven through His hands and feet, thorns pressed into His brow. With His last breath as He was asphyxiating, excruciating pain shooting through his body, He pleaded on the behalf His oppressors. He faced every injustice, every flogging, He faced death with love. He did it for us. So now that when we face injustice and we face death, we can rejoice! Because we have done it all to our Lord and He has pleaded on our behalf, and the only response to that is overwhelming love and peace. Peace in the face of trials. Peace in the face of financial difficulties. Peace in the face of a boss who takes advantage of us. We are free to share His love in all circumstances because He made a way!

Paul writes in 1 Timothy 1:16 “But for that very reason I was shown mercy so that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display His immense patience as an example for those who would believe in him and receive eternal life.” (TNIV) We can invite our coworkers to church and put our favorite Bible verse at the end of our interoffice e-mails, but what they’ll remember is the patience we display in situations where patience is simply not humanly possible. Jesus made a way for us as we are, chiefs of sinners in our own right, to show the world a love not humanly possible. His love that rescued us.